Tag

unit 7 cities

"In so many ways, Seattle is an amazing success story, thriving and economically vibrant, drawing thousands of people from around the country and the world. But we’ve also paid a hefty price for our success. The sudden injection of tech wealth has made Seattle a more exclusive place. It’s exacerbated inequalities, pushing people out of the city or even into homelessness. Rapid growth has taxed our infrastructure, and the debate over where to house all these new people has divided the city."

Here are three articles from West Coast cities (Seattle, San Francisco, and San Diego) all bemoaning the troubles/difficulties associated with the increasingly expensive housing markets that are negatively impacting the quality of life and the communities. The three cities in question are all perceived as highly desirable places to live and many creative industries and businesses are flourishing in these areas.

Rapid economic success will change a city–and reconfigure the spatial networks and the sense of place in many neighborhoods. As demand for new housing in exclusive neighborhoods grows, gentrification is but one of the processes that will impact the city. These are some of the most economically successful cities on the West Coast; but economic success for a region will also present new difficulties and challenges as many domestic and international migrants are attracted to these comes the areas. Virtually all of the cities that migrants are being pulled to for economic opportunities and cultural amenities are going to be experiencing some similar struggles.

This is a good article about the critical nature of transportation infrastructure to a growing city in the developing world. More important than this one article, I want to highlight the entire Guardian series entitled "The Next 15 Megacities."

In 1975 there were only 3 megacities (cities population over 10 million) in the world. Today there are 33 megacities and by 2035, there are expected to be 48. This acceleration is one of the more astounding and important facts about how the world is changing today. This series explores these emerging megacities that will have over 10 million by 2035; overwhelmingly these cities are in Asia.

Urban ecology, environmental justice, gendered inequities, primate city politics, the struggle of growing megacities…it’s all here in this fantastic piece of investigative reporting. The article highlights the ecological problems that Mexico City faces (high-altitude exacerbates air pollution, interior drainage worsens water pollution, limited aquifers that are overworked lead to subsidence, importing water outside of the basin requires enormous amounts of energy, etc.). just because the article doesn’t use the word ‘geography’ doesn’t mean that it isn’t incredibly geographic. All of these problems are at the heart of human-environmental nexus of 21st century urbanization.

“The world is experiencing rapid urbanisation, but not every city is growing. Population is likely to decline in 17% of large cities in developed regions and 8% of cities across the world from 2015 to 2025, according to a McKinsey report.”

“Jane Jacobs lacked formal training in city planning but became an urban visionary who promoted dense, mixed-use neighborhoods where people interacted on the streets. She also became the nemesis of New York master builder Robert Moses. On our inaugural episode, we’ll explore Jacobs’ legacy and how the ideas and ideals of ‘St. Jane’ hold up today.”

How do you create a sense of place? How can you make a neighborhood more vibrant and meaningful to the residents? These are questions that central to city planners, community organizers, activists, home owners, renters, business owners, and a wide range of local stakeholders. The Placemakers podcast has many episodes on these topics worth listening to, starting with the one about Jane Jacobs, a leading urbanist who was a proponent of “The Cheerful Hurly-Burly” of the “zoomed in” city life who fought against Robert Moses’ more sterile “zoomed out” spaces of transportation flows. In another podcast titled “the quest for the perfect place,” the series explores new urbanism and the ideas that have shaped the movement.

By now I’m sure many of you have seen some iteration of this research and data visualization circulating through social media outlets (you can see the article from City Lab, Atlas Obscura or an urban planning program). We use terms like the greater metropolitan area to express the idea that areas beyond the city boundaries and even beyond the metropolitan statistical areas are linked with cities. These ‘mega-regions’ are in part the hinterlands of a city, a functional region where the cities act as hubs of economic regions.

“Asia’s rapid urbanisation is changing the very shape and nature of what we think of as a city. It’s not just the rapid increase in their numbers or their sheer size that makes these megacities fascinating. They look, feel and behave differently, too.”

The term megacity (a city with a population greater than 10 million) has been around for a while and there wasn’t much linguistic need to describe something bigger. Today, most megacities are more like Lagos and Mumbai, places of extreme wealth asymmetries than the global cities of New York City and London. Some are now using the term metacity to describe cities with populations of 20 million. Asian metacities are a good place to start thinking about the largest urban regions that are increasingly dominating economic, political and cultural affairs.

This is an intriguing article that explores the difficulties of forced migrations that arise from civil war, but it also looks at city planning as refugee camps are established to make homes for the displaced. These camps have become into de-facto cities. The maps, videos and photographs embedded in the article show the rapid development of these insta-cities which organically have evolved to fit the needs of incoming refugees. Size not investing in permanent infrastructure has some serious social, sanitation and financial cost, there are some efforts to add structure to the chaos, to formalize the informal. Truly this is a fascinating case study of in urban geography as we are increasingly living on what Mike Davis refers to as a “Planet of Slums.”